I think marksmen are better than dagger-wearer at any time of the game, be it CC, burst or sustained damage. So no, daggers are not better than bow, even lategame. Just positioning yourself in the back of ennemies is annoying and you have to do it just to do roughly equal damage.
I have no idea how good shields are for warriors, because I give shield to my support mage (once the mage has unloaded his cc, there's not much use to him so can tank himself). The advantage to that is that you can use touch-based spells aswell.
However, I don't do it before lvl 14 (when tormented souls give 2 strength on weapons). At which point I get one or two points in man-at-arms for the stances (including turtle), the AOE shout, the anti-knockback/burn ability, the dash.
Note that shields at low level have a very low block chance (armor give always the same damage reduction when you keep it up to date, but that's not the case for magic resistance nor block chances, which means mid-game to lategame you can become immune to elemental damage and block a lot).
Giving leadership to a mage/support is a good idea because generally they don't benefit much from it, however it's really best when the mage is one of your two main character (I rarely pick Jahan). Especially since such mage need a lot of ability points, and you don't really want your mage to be your crafter aswell (especially not if not a main).
Because you get one point in leadership for free from trait (assuming you don't pick the useless trait that gives pickpocketing), which translates into 6 ability point if you use it to cap leadership to 6, and because the leader doesn't get the immunity to fear nor any of the benefit leadership provides to the team, but the main chars get an immunity to fear from a trait. And a mage can have two wands with leadership on it early game (+2), then a str-based weapon and a shield mid-game / late-game (only +1). With a leadership helmet, it means a mage only need 2 points in leadership to get capped early game, and 3 lategame.
A mage support is essentially hydrosophist/witchcraft (4 and 4 is enough), and 2 in areo. You can have 2 in geo, 1 2 or 3 in pyro (very optional however) aswell. It gives you the cheap cc from areo/witchcraft/hydro, the heals from hydro, the cheap summon from witchcraft (or the other one who has the AOE taunt), the icewall (which creates ice fields -> ennemies slip and that trigger bully), mass disease (you can drop it from afar without triggering combat, cheap way of removing 30% of ennemies HP from the get go) and soulsap (put it on priority target).
In general you want 4 in a branch not before lvl 12, and 5 (if you decide to get 5, which is only really useful on marksmen) not before 15. 2 not before 6 and 3 not before 9. (simply multiply by 3).
So you need at least one unused point at level 11, and sometimes two unused at level 14. The rest of the point, you can spend on other things like weapon specialization, leadership, craft, ...
Last edited by Chrest; 20/11/15 05:15 PM.
